Starting from central hypotheses on the relationship between personality and affective disorders, the profiles in the Freiburg Personality Inventory (FPI-A) of 23 unipolar depressives, 26 bipolar manic-depressives and 30 healthy controls of the standardization sample were analysed. Assessment by the Freiburg Personality Inventory was carried out at the time of discharge under the instruction to refer the answers to the time before the beginning of the illness. Parallel to the personality assessment the degree of remission was documented by the scales "Depressive Syndrome", "Apathetic Syndrome" and "Manic Syndrome" of the AMDP system and the d2 concentration test. In intraclass covariance analyses the following scales showed significant differences between unipolar depressives, bipolar manic-depressives and normal controls: FPI3 "Depressiveness", FPI8 "Inhibition" and FPIE "Extraversion". The differences cannot be explained by age or sex. In contrast to manic-depressives, unipolar depressives characterize themselves as more depressive, inhibited and introverted. The bipolar manic-depressives do not differ from the norms in any scale of the FPI. These findings are compared both with the starting hypotheses and with results reported in the literature.